Nukes and Holocausts

by Gordon Prather

In 1939, a group of Hungarian-born physicists
 including Leo Szilard, Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner  persuaded Einstein
to write
President Roosevelt, bringing to his attention the possibility that recent scientific
discoveries, by Lise Meitner
and others still in Europe, could result in "extremely powerful bombs of a new
type."

Roosevelt was interested enough to meet several times with Einstein's emissaries
(Einstein, himself, spoke very little English) who convinced FDR that if we
did not develop such bombs before the Nazis did, they would "blow us up."

Six months after FDR imposed a blockade on Japan  similar to the one The Best
Congress AIPAC Can Buy wants
Bush to impose on Iran  the Japanese attempted to destroy our blockade fleet
in the Philippine and Hawaiian islands and elsewhere, and a few days after that,
Adolph Hitler obliged FDR by declaring war on America.

Our Manhattan
Project  to develop nuclear-fission weapons  was established in the summer
of 1942.

As it happens, the Nazi's effort
to develop such a bomb (which never got anything like the priority of the Manhattan
Project) was hampered by Hitler's view that it probably could not succeed, certainly
not in time for use in his Operation Barbarossa, launched in September of 1941,
which he expected to win in a year or two, at most.

But the Soviet Union effectively won their Great Patriotic War against Hitler
at Kursk, in the summer of 1943.

And, by late1944, most of the European ιmigrι scientists  as
a result of contacts with their former colleagues  had concluded that the German
nuclear-fission weapons program had never got off the ground.

So, as soon as it became known within the Manhattan Project that the bomb would
be used against the Japanese and not the Nazis, more than a few scientists left
the project and some  notably instigator Leo Szilard  even began to oppose
it, as a "terrible mistake."

After the war, we conducted extensive tests of rapidly improving designs of
fission weapons and documented the blast and thermal radiation effects of such
weapons.

A terrible thing, indeed.

You might have thought that Israel, of all countries, would have been in the
forefront of international efforts to prevent the proliferation of such weapons.

But, No! Israel has refused even to become a signatory to the Treaty on Non-Proliferation
of Nuclear Weapons. None of Israel's nuclear programs are subject to the Safeguards
and Physical Security System of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Then, on June 7, 1981, the Israelis "took out" Osiraq, a small French-built
research reactor, which was IAEA Safeguarded, apparently because the Israelis
had concluded that Osiraq  rather than the Tooth Fairy  would miraculously
leave a few nuclear weapons under Saddam Hussein's pillow.

"The atomic bombs which that reactor was capable of producing  whether
from enriched uranium or from plutonium  would be of the Hiroshima size. Thus
a mortal danger to the people of Israel progressively arose."

Of course, Osiraq could never have produced , while IAEA-Safeguarded, weapons-grade
plutonium and was not even capable of producing enriched uranium at all.

Furthermore, as the Security Council noted in UNSCR
487, passed in the immediate aftermath of the Israeli attack, it was;

"Fully aware of the fact that Iraq has been a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation
of Nuclear Weapons since it came into force in 1970, that, in accordance with
that treaty, Iraq has accepted IAEA safeguards on all its nuclear activities,
and that the agency has testified that these safeguards have been satisfactorily
applied to date;"

In 1981 we and the rest of the world "strongly" condemned the Israeli
attack on IAEA Safeguarded facilities.

Then, in 1986, with the publication in The
Sunday Times of the documentation (including photographs)
provided them by the defector Mordecai Vanunu of Israel's underground "Machon
2" facility, which produced plutonium, lithium deuteride and beryllium,
we learned that Israel already had a stockpile of very sophisticated nuclear
weapons at the time of the Osiraq attack.

And, now, here we are, perhaps on the eve of the Israelis attempting to "take
out"  with the almost explicit support of Bush-Cheney and The Best Congress
AIPAC Can Buy  allthe IAEA Safeguarded facilities in Iran. And
no "options"  including the use of nuclear weapons  are "off
the table"!

A "senior defense official" told ABC
News this summer that there is an "increasing likelihood" that Israel, itself,
will carry out such an attack before Bush-Cheney leave office and identified
two "red lines," which the Israelis will not "allow" the Iranians
to cross.

The first, when in the estimation of the Israelis, Iran's uranium-enrichment
facility at Natanz has produced enough weapons-grade uranium to make a nuclear
weapon.

The Israelis  notwithstanding the fact that no highly-enriched uranium,
much less weapons-grade enriched uranium, could be or wouldbe allowed to be produced at any IAEA-safeguarded facility  believe that
is likely to happen sometime in 2009, and could happen by the end of this year.

The second red line would be Iran achieving operational readiness of the SA-20
air defense system it is buying from Russia to protect its IAEA-Safeguarded
facilities.

Quoth "senior defense official";

"The red line is not when they get to that point, but before they get to that
point."

Everyone, most especially the Israelis, realize they can not "take out"
all the IAEA Safeguarded facilities in Iran with conventional weapons.

But they could make a start, and then come to us with this
threat  "either you finish the job for us, or we will, with nukes".

Well, we know that Bush-Cheney would do. As far as they're concerned, either
Iran "voluntarily" gives up its alienable rights  affirmed under
the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons  to enrich uranium for use
in peaceful applications, or Bush-Cheney will force them to.

And "no option is off the table," including our use of nuclear weapons.

But suppose the Israelis don't act until after Obama becomes President?

Obama reportedly
told the House Democratic Caucus last week that "Nobody said this to me,
directly, but I get the feeling from my talks [with Israeli leaders] that if
the sanctions don't work, Israel is going to strike Iran".

Well, the sanctions are not going "to work."

Just last week 115 members of the Non-Aligned Movement issued a strongly worded
declaration, expressing support for Iran's insistence upon pursuing "without
discrimination" its "inalienable rights"  affirmed under the
NPT  and deploring the misuse [by Bush-Cheney-Rice-Bolton] of the IAEA for
political purposes and the involvement of the UN Security Council in matters
not its concern under the UN Charter.

So, suppose President Obama refuses to "finish" the job the Israelis
have started.

Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Reproduction of material from any original Antiwar.com pages
without written permission is strictly prohibited.
Copyright 2015 Antiwar.com